My Firefox/Google Chrome are both acting weird

One day I opened my firefox and it randomly crashed. When I try to open it it shows me the page like it just did an update but all of the font is replaced with tiny rectangles and it immediately crashes before I can surf. I tried doing a clean reinstall and I tried opening it in Safe Mode. It still crashes the same way.

Originally I tried just giving up on it and using my Google Chrome, which works well for the most part. but certain websites and fonts show up as weird scribbles (reddit specifically but there are others too).

It looks like this:



Now I think its either a problem with my system fonts (which I know nothing about) or maybe I have a virus or something. Any tips?

I'm using version 10.5.8 OS X

It's possible that you have some corrupt fonts. Open up Font Book, click "All Fonts", select them all and go to File > Validate Fonts. Let us know what you get as output for that.

Thanks for the reply,

326 fonts passed

No minor or serious issues.

I think according to this all the fonts are okay

What do you have set for the fonts in Chrome: Chrome > Preferences > Under the Hood > Web Content? (sorry, I'm running the dev version and the preference page has been redesigned).

Font Size: Medium
Page zoom: 100%


I think I found the problem. I found a program called FontNuke from this page: CreativeTechs Tips: Garbled Font Fix: Corrupt Font Cache

Once I downloaded the program, I ran it and immediately restarted my computer. Both Chrome and Firefox are working perfectly now.

Good job this is largely a US forum, or your username might raise some eyebrows.